A negotiation that doesn’t add up.

Let me tell you about a deal.

Our champion and point of contact was a Sr.Director. His boss was an SVP. of an $11B market cap enterprise with 20k employees. The conversations happened mainly on those two fronts.

I chatted with the Director who had a large list of asks, from many internal teams.

My CEO chatted with the SVP (1 on 1) who said everything was hunky dory and he could sign a six figure deal, tomorrow. His DIr. kept pushing back that we had things to resolve.

This disconnect happened for a couple of weeks. Eventually we all got in the same room, where the SVP still says we have a deal, tomorrow IF the DIr. was happy. He was a YES man, in-person ,and was making his direct report bring the bad news and do the dirty work.

My CEO was shocked (“Why doesn’t the SVP just be direct), but this executive essentially negotiated through one of his minions.

Think about that when you are doing enterprise sales with multiple levels of broken telephone.

P.S. We closed and expanded this deal into mid six-figures. The SVP became a reference customer in future deals and fundraising.